The Ring of Solomon

first.
    ‘All very well,’ I said airily, ‘but assume you had ignored the Illusion and got as far as the real Solomon. He’d still have had the Ring. You would never have got it off him.’
    From somewhere came a roaring that was at once ferocious and very faint, like a thunderstorm heard far away at sea. The air moved with curious wafts and eddies, swaying the moth gently to and fro. O most lowly and offal-headed Bartimaeus, how I long to tear your wings to tissue shreds! Solomon is not invincible! When he sleeps, he removes his Ring!
    At this the tenor of my voice became a trifle sceptical. ‘Why would he do that? All the stories say he never takes it off. One of his wives tried—’
    The stories are wrong! It suits the king that they should be so, which is why he spreads them. Between midnight and cock-crow, the king must sleep. To sleep he must remove the Ring!
    ‘But he simply wouldn’t do it,’ I said. ‘It’s far too risky for him. All his power—’
    A horrid gurgling, like that of a particularly malevolent blocked drain, resounded all around me. Philocretes was laughing. Yes, yes, the power is the problem! The Ring contains too much. Its energies burn whoever wears it! This, by day, is something Solomon can endure, though he has to conceal his pain from the outside world. At night, in solitude, he must give himself respite. The Ring lies on a silver dish beside his pallet – close enough for him to reach, of course. Ah, but he is vulnerable!
    ‘It burns him …’ I murmured. ‘I suppose it could be so. I have known such things before.’ 4
    That is not the only drawback of the Ring , the voice went on. Why do you think Solomon uses it so rarely? Why do you think he relies so heavily upon the magicians who cluster around his feet like fawning dogs?
    The moth shrugged. 5 ‘I just assumed he was lazy.’
    Not so! Whenever it is used, the Ring draws life out from the wearer, and he or she is left weakened by the act. The energies of the Other Place work harm upon a mortal’s body, if exposed to it too long. Solomon himself, with all the great works he has accomplished, is already aged far beyond his years.
    The moth frowned. 6 ‘He looked all right to me.’
    Look closer. Little by little the Ring is killing him, Bartimaeus. Another man would have given up the fight by now, but the fool has a strong sense of responsibility. He fears that someone less virtuous than himself might find and use the Ring. The consequences of that …
    The moth nodded. 7 ‘Might well be terrible …’ What an informative pot this was. Of course, Philocretes might just be mad, and certainly some things he said didn’t quite gel with what the girl had told me. For instance, just how virtuous was it to threaten to destroy Sheba if you didn’t get the big pile of frankincense you wanted? Then again, Solomon was human. And that meant he was flawed. 8
    Still, there was no way of telling the truth of it without going to see things for myself.
    ‘Thanks for that, Philocretes,’ I said. ‘I must admit it sounds as if you’re right. Solomon does have a weakness. He is vulnerable.’
    Ah yes, but he is safe … for no one knows these facts but me.
    ‘Er, and me now,’ I said cheerily. ‘And I’m going to look into it all this minute. Might even pinch the Ring if I get a chance. Tell you what – you think of me doing that, getting a spot of revenge and everlasting glory, while you stay mouldering away in this tedious old pot. If you’d been polite to me I might have offered to break it for you, thus putting you out of your misery, but you weren’t, and I won’t. If I remember, I may get around to visiting you again in a millennium or two. Until then, farewell.’
    With that the moth made for the lid, and now there came such a faraway howling that my wings rippled in consternation. Little buffets of air beset me, blowing me for an instant off my course. Then I righted myself and reached the lid and, in a moment more, had pushed myself out of the dust and darkness, and was back in the living world.
    I was a cat again, standing in shadows. I looked back at the pot. Did I hear a distant voice screaming, cursing, shouting out my name? I listened hard.
    No, there was nothing.
    Turning away, I peered out of the storeroom into the central hall. All was still; the Glamour hung like gold haze above the silent pool and couches. There was no marauding entity and no Arabian girl. But then I spied, beyond the archway